The Key to Happiness Isn’t What You Think | Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky

The Key to Happiness Isn’t What You Think | Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky

After 36 years of studying what makes people happy, Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky landed somewhere she didn’t expect: the key isn’t success or achievement — it’s feeling loved. And feeling loved, it turns out, is something you can build. Episode Summary Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky has spent her career running what she calls happiness interventions — essentially clinical trials, but instead of testing a medication, her lab tests practices like writing gratitude letters or doing acts of kindness. After nearly three decades of this work, she noticed something: almost every practice that reliably makes people happier works for the same underlying reason. It makes them feel more connected to and loved by others. That insight became her new book, How to Feel Loved, co-written with relationship scientist Harry Reis. The central, quietly radical idea is that you can be surrounded by love and still not feel it — and that the fix isn’t to change yourself or to persuade anyone to love you more. It’s to change the conversation. A relationship, as Sonja frames it, is just a series of conversations, which means the next one is always within your control. The conversation moves from the science to the deeply practical: why “going first” with genuine curiosity disarms the walls we build, how a parent breaks through to a kid over a video game, what makes us reach for the impressive story instead of the connecting one, and the five mindsets that help people feel more loved. Shaun and Sonja also get into money — specifically why the spending that actually buys happiness tends to be spending on connection — and close on the vulnerability paradox: showing more of ourselves, at the right time, usually makes us feel more loved, not less. For an audience of people who have built successful lives and are quietly asking what it’s all for, this one lands on the answer that tends to matter most at the end. Key Topics Covered — The 36-year conclusion: feeling loved is the key to happiness — Why nearly every happiness intervention works through connection — The difference between being loved and feeling loved — “Change the conversation” — control you actually have — Going first: leading with genuine curiosity — The five mindsets of feeling loved — Multiplicity: holding people as more than one trait — Listening to learn vs. listening to respond — Spending money on connection, growth, and generosity — The vulnerability paradox MEMORABLE QUOTES “Really the key to happiness is feeling loved.” Timestamp: [03:54] “You can have love in your life, you can be loved and not feel loved.” Timestamp: [17:23] “You don’t actually have to change yourself. You don’t actually have to change the other person. All you have to do is change the conversation.” Timestamp: [18:32] “A relationship is just a series of conversations.” Timestamp: [18:38] “If you want to feel more loved, the first step is actually to make the other person feel more loved. So you go first.” Timestamp: [18:50] ABOUT DR. SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky is a professor of psychology at UC Riverside and one of the most widely cited happiness researchers in the world. For nearly thirty years, her lab has run happiness interventions — rigorous trials testing which practices actually move well-being. Born in Russia and raised partly in the United States, she brings a cross-cultural eye to questions of happiness, connection, and what it means to feel at home with other people. She teaches an undergraduate happiness course of 300 students — complete with a song playlist for every lecture. Her new book, How to Feel Loved, co-authored with relationship scientist Harry Reis, is, in her words, the most important thing she’s done in her career — because it distills decades of research into the one thing that turned out to matter most. CONNECT & RESOURCES Connect with Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky — Website: howtofeelloved.com — Book: How to Feel Loved — howtofeelloved.com (take the mindset quiz)

Train Your Mind Like Your Body | Andy Riise

Andy Riise has spent his life around pressure. Twenty years in the U.S. Army, including West Point, Iraq, and Afghanistan. A first post-military job in Major League Baseball with the Cincinnati Reds. Mental performance coaching in the NFL with the Chicago Bears. But the thread running through all of it isn’t toughness in the way we usually picture it. It’s the opposite of the “suck it up and drive on” culture he grew up in. In this conversation, Andy lays out his core idea: mental fitness is trainable. He uses the image of an arena — a structure with character as its foundation, the four C’s as its pillars, connection as the frame, and culture as the dome. Around that image he draws a sharper distinction: most people are either lost between arenas, watching from the spectator seats, or actually in the arena, willing to try and fail in public. The invitation of the episode is to step in. The turn comes when Andy talks about his own hardest battles — not combat, but the eight inches between his ears. He’s candid about imposter syndrome at West Point, the voice that attacked him daily, and the mentor (Captain Carl Olsen) who first taught him that confidence and focus are skills, not gifts. From there he gives the listener something practical: a thirty-second daily check-in (surviving, resilient, or thriving), the question “what can you do to fight to the right,” and the Four C’s framework for navigating change. He also pushes back on the cult of grit. There’s a glass ceiling, he says — a time to grit, a time to quit, and a time to pivot — and he tells the story of a minor-league ballplayer hanging on to a dream at the cost of everything else. The conversation closes where YouPotential always returns: identity, money, and what happens when your whole sense of self is tied to the scorecard. Key Topics Covered * The Arena as operating system: A visual model for character, mental fitness, connection, and culture. * Three kinds of people: The lost, the spectators (and critics), and the performers in the arena. * Identity in transition: Leaving a twenty-year military identity and asking “who am I?” not just “what’s next?” * The real battlefield: Why the hardest fights are internal, not external. * Mental fitness is trainable: Treating the mind like the body — reps, recovery, repeat. * The daily check-in: Surviving, resilient, or thriving — and “what can I do to fight to the right?” * The Four C’s: Confidence, control, commitment, challenge — with control as the entry point. * Grit’s glass ceiling: When to grit, when to quit, when to pivot. * Money and identity: What happens when self-worth is tied to being the breadwinner. Memorable Quotes “The hardest battles you fought weren’t in Iraq or Afghanistan. They were in the eight inches between your ears.” Timestamp: [17:33] (host frame, Andy affirms) “I thought that it made me automatically mentally tough and I was wrong.” Timestamp: [18:25] “Everybody’s fighting this war for mental fitness.” Timestamp: [22:14] “The credit belongs to the performers who are in the arena.” Timestamp: [06:33] “To develop black belt skills you have to have a white belt mindset.” Timestamp: [01:04:04] About Andy Riise Andy Riise is a mental performance coach who works at the intersection of behavioral science and lived experience. Before coaching, he served twenty years in the U.S. Army, beginning at West Point and including combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, along with work supporting elite special operations units. After the military, Andy moved into performance coaching — first in Major League Baseball with the Cincinnati Reds, then in the NFL with the Chicago Bears. His philosophy is built around the idea that mental fitness can be trained like the body, using assessments, skills, and repetition rather than slogans or hacks. He’s the host of the Skull Sessions Podcast, the founder of Design to Perform, and is writing a book with the working title Step Into the Arena. He lives with his wife and four children, and names service as his principal core value. Connect With Andy Riise * Website: andyriise.com * Podcast: Skull Sessions Podcast * Coaching: Design to Perform Resources Mentioned * Theodore Roosevelt’s “The Man in the Arena” (from the “Citizenship in a Republic” speech) * The Four C’s model of mental toughness (confidence, control, commitment, challenge) * Ford v Ferrari (referenced on the mind–body / man–machine relationship) * The Pantheon in Rome (the architectural metaphor for Andy’s model) * “The measure of a life is in its service” — motto of Sam Houston State University About YouPotential YouPotential explores what it means to live a meaningful life — through conversations about money, purpose, relationships, and becoming. Hosted by Shaun Maslyk. “Sometimes it’s not the answers we learn from — but the questions.”

I Built a Business That Doesn't Need Me | Jodie Cook

EPISODE SUMMARY Jodie Cook has lived several lives most people would be happy with just one of: founder of a social media agency she scaled and sold, author, Forbes columnist, competitive powerlifter for Great Britain, and now the founder of an AI company, Coachbox. But this conversation isn't a highlight reel. It's an excavation of the mental operating system underneath the wins — the framings and beliefs that let her keep moving when most people would freeze. We start with Charlie Cole, the alter ego she invented to catch herself in the act of “good girl conditioning” — the inherited training to be polite, agreeable, and small. From there the conversation moves through the stories that shaped her: a self-employed mother who taught her what work looked like, fifteen jobs before she was twenty-one, and an early decision that the words you use to describe yourself are the words you eventually become. The emotional center is March 2020. Jodie had built an agency that ran without her — she traveled four months a year, and her team pulled rocks out of her backpack rather than putting them in. Then COVID took a quarter of her clients in a week, and she had to decide who she was when the thing she'd built was on fire. What she did next, and what it taught her about when to hold on and when to let go, is the heart of this episode. For anyone who has built something successful and quietly wondered “is this it?” — or who suspects the story running their life was written by someone else — this is a conversation about taking the pen back. KEY TOPICS COVERED * Good girl conditioning & the alter ego: why Jodie invented Charlie Cole, and how an alter ego is permission to be more yourself. * The power of self-naming: calling it “my business” when it was just her — the label comes before the identity. * Money as freedom: how a purple Kia Picanto at 17 wired a belief that money equals freedom and travel. * A business that doesn't need you: rewarding self-sufficiency and getting your ego out of the team's way. * Reframing fear as “go time”: a childhood framing of nerves as excitement that became a lifelong advantage. * Adlerian psychology: why she believes you chose your problems — and why that's liberating. * “Living in the end”: the nightly visualization practice she uses before competitions and big decisions. * The personal success system: why everyone has a repeatable recipe for their wins. * Playing your ace cards: the things that come easy to you that you've been taught to hide. MEMORABLE QUOTES “I think that everyone's alter ego is just them. It's just who they would be if they weren't afraid of something or if they didn't need permission.” 📍 03:24 “take your power back. Who are you waiting for? Like no one cares, they're all doing their own stuff.” 📍 07:01 “my job is to never put out the same fire twice.” 📍 16:42 “I love the idea that nothing in my past had any power at all over who I am now. I chose it. Because you do take your power back.” 📍 34:36 “trying is a confession of absence. So as soon as you're trying to get something, you're like basically saying, I don't have it.” 📍 35:32 ABOUT JODIE COOK Jodie Cook is a British entrepreneur, author, and athlete. She founded a social media agency at 22 and sold it ten years later, then spent time helping other agency owners navigate their own exits. She is a Forbes columnist, the author of several books including Ten Year Career, and competes for Great Britain in bench press. Her latest venture is Coachbox AI, a platform that lets coaches, consultants, and founder-led businesses build their own AI version of themselves — a company that grew, fittingly, out of people simply asking her to make one for them. A committed digital nomad, she travels the world with a single suitcase and a clear philosophy: that the words you use to describe yourself shape who you become, and that almost everything you need to succeed, you already have. RESOURCES MENTIONED * The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga — the Adlerian book Jodie travels with * Alfred Adler / individual psychology — goal-based vs. cause-and-effect thinking * Neville Goddard — the “living in the end” philosophy * Akira the Don & “Meaning Wave” — introduced her to Goddard (album: Stop Trying) * Dr. Wayne Dyer — “see someone's highest potential and treat them like that's all you see” * Coachbox AI — Jodie's current company ABOUT YOUPOTENTIAL YouPotential explores what it means to live a meaningful life — through conversations about money, purpose, relationships, and becoming. Hosted by Shaun Maslyk. “Sometimes it's not the answers we learn from — but the questions.”

Deep Cuts: Parent From Principles, Not Rules

Most of us are making rules. Todd Kashdan is making principles. The difference shapes the kid. In this Deep Cuts, I pull the parenting threads out of my YouPotential conversation with Dr. Todd Kashdan — Professor of Psychology at George Mason University and one of the most cited researchers in the world on curiosity, psychological flexibility, and well-being. Todd grew up without a father. His mom died when he was twelve. He had almost no model for what an engaged dad looked like. So he built one — three principles his kids could recite by age five. We get into post-traumatic growth, the cult of high-achieving kids, the financial cost of the optimized childhood, the 10% retirement concept, psychological flexibility as a unified theory, and a practice called strengths-spotting that changed how I show up with my own son. It's not a how-to. It's a re-frame of what the job actually is. Key Topics * Todd's three principles — what to stand for instead of what to forbid * Post-traumatic growth and the name tag we don't have to wear * Beach Week — intel over interrogation * The cult of high-achieving kids and what we're really buying * Path A vs Path B — Todd's framework for teenagers * Why relationships predict happiness more than credentials * The 10% retirement — quietly stepping off the achievement treadmill * Psychological flexibility — meeting the moment instead of repeating yourself * Principled rebellion — how kids become adults who change institutions * Strengths-spotting — bolding and italicizing who your kid is becoming Memorable Quotes "Since my kids were five years old, they could recite the three principles of Todd as their dad. One, I'm going to make you laugh. Two, I'm gonna teach you stuff. Three, I'm always gonna be there." 📍 00:54 "I think all of us should basically try not to be enslaved by our past, but use it as a comparator of — this will not take place again on my watch." 📍 14:25 "We do know that this is the number one predictor cross-culturally of what predicts happiness — lasting, significant, meaningful interactions and relationships." 📍 40:39 "Everyone has this jagged profile of skills, abilities, personality traits. You have to figure out what dimension is going to work best in the situation that I'm in right now." 📍 1:21:06 "Consistency doesn't mean saying the same thing over and over — a lot of activists get this wrong." 📍 1:04:02 About Todd Kashdan Dr. Todd Kashdan is Professor of Psychology at George Mason University and director of the Well-Being Laboratory. He's one of the world's leading researchers on curiosity, psychological flexibility, and well-being — over 225 peer-reviewed articles, cited more than 35,000 times. He's the author of The Art of Insubordination, Curious?, The Upside of Your Dark Side, and Designing Positive Psychology. He writes the popular Substack Provoked. He's a father of twin daughters (plus one more). Connect With Todd 🌐 Website: toddkashdan.com 📚 Substack: toddkashdan.substack.com 📖 Books: The Art of Insubordination · Curious? · The Upside of Your Dark Side Resources Mentioned VIA Character Strengths Survey — viacharacter.org (Peterson & Seligman) Post-traumatic growth research — Tedeschi & Calhoun The 10% Retirement — Jay Van Bavel

What 200 Years of American History Knew About Money (That We Forgot) | Dr. Joseph Moore

Joseph Moore is a historian, author, and former academic who left a teaching salary to take what he calls his "big leap" — a leap his wife had to sign off on before he could make it. In this conversation, Shaun and Joseph dig into why that single act of partnership turned out to be more important than any investment Joseph ever made. Joseph pulls from 200 years of American history to make a case that almost no one in modern personal finance is making — that marriage was once considered the single most important financial decision a person could make, and the data still backs it up today. He shares the stats: married men retire with ten times the wealth of single or divorced men. Married women earn twice what single women earn. Married Black men out-earn single white men. And yet we have quietly traded that wisdom for spreadsheets and stock picks. The conversation takes a turn when Shaun asks what changed when Joseph hit his financial independence number. Joseph's answer is more honest than expected — almost nothing changed. Hitting the number did not deliver the identity shift he thought it would. To make the point real, he tells the story of the day he literally made himself a billionaire by issuing his own cryptocurrency. His wife's response is the punchline of the whole episode. What you walk away with is a quietly radical idea: net worth is a recent invention, and chasing it might be costing you the things that history says actually matter — the relationships, the second life you get to live in your sixties and beyond, and the small, ordinary moments like watching Bluey on the couch with your six-year-old. KEY TOPICS COVERED * The scantily clad budget summit — how a Jimmy Buffett-themed weekend became the moment Joseph asked his wife for permission to bet the family on a business * Marriage as financial superpower — why old business manuals taught young men how to pick a spouse before they taught them how to calculate interest * The card game of the 1840s — how families used to teach their kids about partnership and trade-offs * The myth of net worth — why this number did not exist in American life until the 1910s and why chasing it is a modern trap * Joseph's billionaire experiment — the day he made himself worth $1.1 billion and what happened next * The Bluey moment — his book hits number one and his daughter does not care * You live two lives — why Warren Buffett made 99% of his wealth after age 60 and what that means for the rest of us * The two-income family is ancient — why the idea that women just started working in the 1960s is historically wrong MEMORABLE QUOTES "Capitalism is a team sport. And that makes marriage a superpower." — Joseph Moore — 02:38 "Marriage is the single most important financial decision of your entire life." — Joseph Moore — 03:09 "I was a billionaire, but it didn't mean anything." — Joseph Moore — 07:46 "My net worth is a lot less valuable than my willingness to go coach seventh grade girls basketball." — Joseph Moore — 10:32 "You don't live one life, you live two." — Joseph Moore — 13:36 "You will ultimately choose your attitude and you will be the one who decides if you think things are filled with blessings or filled with curses — and choose the blessings." — Joseph Moore — 21:14 ABOUT JOSEPH MOORE Joseph Moore is a historian and author who walked away from an academic salary in his forties to test a single idea from American economic history. He spent years reading the old stuff — the manuals, the ledgers, the letters — and what he found pushed him to write a book. He is a father, a writer, and a self-described optimist in a culture that rewards cynicism. His new book is How to Get Rich in American History. He runs a Substack at josephmoorebooks.com where he shares his research and gives away the first chapter for free. CONNECT WITH JOSEPH * Website: josephmoorebooks.com [https://www.josephmoorebooks.com/] * Book: How to Get Rich in American History RESOURCES MENTIONED * Warren Buffett and the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting (Omaha) * William Wells Brown — the formerly enslaved man who issued his own currency * Jane Austen novels (as references for "estate worth" vs. "net worth") * HGTV (referenced as a financial cautionary tale)